jfruh writes: "Many Slashdotters have long contended that pirated music isn't really biting into artists' revenues because people who illegally download music would not have bought it if piracy weren't an option. Now a study by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, examining the habits of 16,000 European citizens, has come to the same conclusion."

"If this estimate is given a causal interpretation, it means that clicks on legal purchase websites would have been 2 percent lower in the absence of illegal downloading websites," according to the study.
If it is given a casual interpretation they can come to pretty much any conclusion. All the study really shows is that people who like music are more likely to visit more media outlets to acquire it, be them legal or otherwise. I'd like to see a better analysis on this topic just because I am actually c